On Jan. 2, 2002, the new European currency, the Euro, became the official currency of twelve European countries. The countries that adopted the Euro as their official currency are Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. After Feb. 28, 2002, the national currencies of these countries were no longer accepted for transactions. With the adoption of the Euro as the official currency of most European nations, a unified economic marketplace of over 300 million people has been created. Denmark, Great Britain, and Sweden may also adopt the Euro as their official currencies sometime in the future, thereby creating an even larger unified economic marketplace.
Although the conversion from national currencies to the Euro officially occurred in 2002, many electronic documents created prior to the conversion still contain references to the former national currencies of the member countries. Therefore, when these types of documents are utilized, it may be necessary to convert referenced currency values from the expressed national currency to the Euro. For instance, a user may need to easily and quickly convert a currency value referenced in a word processing document from French Francs to Euro. A user may also need to convert a Euro currency value to one of the former national currencies. However, converting currency values between national currencies and the Euro, and vice versa, has heretofore been difficult for a user to accomplish easily and quickly.
Previously, if a user wanted to convert a currency value referenced in an electronic document, such as a word processing document, between a national European currency and Euro, or vice versa, the user would first have to copy the currency value to be converted to a clipboard. The user would then paste the value into an external program or Web site capable of converting the currency value to Euro. Once the external program or Web site had completed the conversion, the user would copy the converted currency value to the clipboard and then paste the converted value back into the electronic document. The user might also have to locate the currency symbol for the converted type of currency and insert the symbol into the document.
Although systems such as these do allow a user to convert currency values between national European currencies and Euro, these systems can be difficult to use because of the large number of steps required to complete the conversion. Moreover, these previous solutions require the user to perform the conversion using the user interface language of the conversion program or Web site. This can be extremely frustrating for an international user that does not understand the language of the conversion program or Web site.
Therefore, in light of the above, there is a need for a method, system, and apparatus for easily converting currency values between Euro and the national currencies of the member European countries that do not require the user to utilize an external application or Web site to convert currency values. Moreover, there is a need for a method, system, and apparatus for converting currency values between Euro and the national currencies of the member European countries that can present conversion options to the user in a user-selected user interface language.